Many products made from a resilient material such as rubber are molded by a conventional process which results in a plurality of the parts being connected in a single, unitary, integral sheet form. The parts are then blanked from the sheet. Typical of parts manufactured in this fashion are stoppers for pharmaceutical vials which are generally of the type shown, for example in FIG. 3, and have a generally disk-like top T and a plug P depending therefrom which engages in the discharge opening in a vial or bottle for a pharmaceutical product. The plug is of a contoured configuration as shown so that the top can be pierced by a hypodermic syringe to withdraw contents of the container. These molded sheets are usually of a rectangular or square pattern and presently are blanked in their entirety in a trim press of the type shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,161,140. The orientation of the parts or products in the rectangular or square pattern sheets is usually aligned rows or slightly staggered offset aligned rows. While these prior trim presses are generally effective for the purposes intended, nevertheless they have certain disadvantages and drawbacks. In conventional presses of this type, the entire sheet is blanked in one cycle of operation. Consequently, the dies for this press are rather large and thus, add considerably to the expense of the system. Moreover, the power requirements for actuating large die elements is considerably great. It has also been found that in blanking or trimming operations utilizing large dies, it is difficult to obtain the precision and preciseness in trimming all of the parts from the sheet material. Furthermore, these presses are comparatively large and, therefore, rather expensive, particularly for relatively small volume operations where the capacity of the press is not utilized fully.
By reason of the cost of comparatively large die tooling for processing small volume components, it has been found that in small volume operations the punching or trimming is usually done by hand operated mechanisms. This, of course, impacts manual trimming reduces productivity considerably thereby adding to the cost of these products themselves.